Hennessy Youngman

Jayson Musson is back on YouTube, but not with his well-known “Art Thoughtz” web-series featuring Hennessy Youngman. Instead, we get “The Adventures of Jamel: The Time Traveling B-Boy,” created and written by the artist and directed and edited by Scott Ross. It’s flashy, and has more in common with Chappelle’s Show than Hennessy’s old show. Straight up, it’s a hip-hop comedy with sci-fi and social commentary thrown in the mix. I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a pilot in the works for any premium cable channel.

Without giving away any spoilers, in the first episode, we’re introduced to:

An Iraqi baby skull filled with Merlot

The Illuminati

A time-traveling janitor

Mention of anal sex with goats

Breaking the bonds of slavery with the power of hip-hop

Are we playing Cards Against Humanity? No. This is just Jayson Musson’s new web-world, a world without art. So very populist of you, Musson.

If you thought the barrage of openings was over think again. We’re now into week three of opening season. And luckily there’s some good shows on the horizon. Those who are into military inspired Bauhaus drawings, will be pleased to learn that the Drawing Center opens an Alexander ‘Xanti’ Schawinsky this Thursday. Those who are into memes and digital aesthetics have a discussion at PRATT to attend this Friday with, among other star curators, Christiane Paul (The Whitney) and Boris Groys (everywhere). And finally, this Friday the ICA opens a multilingual opera by Alex de Corte and Jayson Musson we’re more than curious about. Musson will be playing his famed youtube persona Hennessy Youngman, so we can’t wait to see what he does with de Corte.

After Time Out Chicago axed their full-time art critic, a flurry of criticism arose about how many full-time art critics are actually out there, and whether freelance critics count. Gallerist NY adds to this debate just by simply stating what critic Deborah Solomon stated on WNYC this week, that there are fewer than ten full-time art critics writing for newspapers. Yes, we know this, but many freelancers out there are upset that “full-time art critic” doesn’t refer to online publications or those who write for several. It’s an issue of legitimacy in the eyes of changing media. For that debate, just take a look at the comments section to this piece. [Gallerist NY]

Greg Allen is no fan of Architecture Firm Diller Scofidio + Renfro’s Hirschhorn design, “The Bubble”. Liz Diller wonders if the museum could be an agent for cultural diplomacy and proceeds to present a structure designed to house expensive events like TED, the WEF, and CFR fora. Why ask the question, if the purpose of the venue won’t ever answer the question. [Greg.org]

Fewer couples are having kids in the states, but they’re making way for more puppies. U-S-A! [The Atlantic]

Bushwick Open Studios starts next week, and runs from May 31st through June 2nd. Here’s the map of the 587 studios listed so far. [Arts in Bushwick]

Hennessy Youngman has come out with his second lo-fi mix this year, CVS Bangers Vol. 2. Listen to the mellow 80s tracks you’d hear while filling your cart up with Mac ‘n’ Cheez Whiz, interrupted by a blaring airhorn, then Hennessy-designed ads, then someone saying “Obama”. Just Obama. [Soundcloud via Twitter]

The Asia Society has hired a new President, Josette Sheeran, vice chair of the World Economic Forum. [The Wall Street Journal]

The Met just appointed a new curator to its Department of Medieval Art and the Cloisters, C. Griffith Mann, since the Cleveland Museum of Art’s chief curator. He’ll be bumping up current curator Peter Barnet to senior curator of that department. [Cleveland.com]

The Met is putting on an exhibition about unicorns to coincide with the 75th anniversary of owning the Unicorn Tapestries. [The Met]

Monkey Farter: A veriositic use of art speak in service of satire. “Here, center stage, the viewer is first confronted with an image that he or she assumes is the monkey farter itself. It is however the first clue to the deceptive and perhaps dangerous game that Will has invited us to play. On closer inspection the object does not so readily give over to the expectations of “monkey” or “monkeyness”….” [Hyperallergic]

Google Glass have begun arriving in the mailboxes of a few hundred “explorers” who pre-ordered the Internet glasses. So far, explorers have begun posting photos documenting the glasses’ meticulous packaging. [The Atlantic Wire]

Andrew Goldstein talks to BOMB Co-Founder and Editor-in-Chief Betsy Sussler. “I thought of BOMB as a one-act play, with a catharsis and denouement that would be tied around revelation.” Sussler tells Goldstein in one of seemingly countless quotable moments from the interview. [Artspace]

Calvin Tomkins profiles Jasper Johns, not as an artist but as the executive of the Foundation for Contemporary Arts (FCA). In the early 1960s, Johns founded the organization so that his friends could put on performances, and to this day, the foundation continues with a similar model: grants should come from the donation and sale of artworks. Note: Paywall. [The New Yorker]

Disappointingly, Hennessy Youngman’s CVS bangers don’t include K.D. Lang’s “Constant Craving”. Just how thorough is this research!?! That said, we do like that he included “Lady in Red” by Chris de Burgh. [In the Air]

Here comes more musical outrage, this time from Ai Weiwei. Just months after the release of his Gangnam Style video, Ai now plans to release a heavy metal album. Someone, Jayson, Hennessy, anyone, please stop these art-celeb tricks. [Reuters]

The New Museum is going global. On Monday, the museum announced they had expanded their board of trustees to include an international super team of collectors, philanthropists, and one Russian billionaire. In the words of Board Chairman Saul Dennison, “The New Museum is New York City’s only museum devoted exclusively to contemporary art from around the globe.” [New Museum]

These are fighting words! In the latest issue of e-flux, co-founder Anton Vidokle dips his pen into the art economy. He tackles a range of subjects concerning the over-professionalization of art, and suggests it might be fine to be a “part-time artist”:

“We should probably be less concerned with being full-time, art-school-trained, professional artists, writers, or curators—less concerned with measuring our artistic worth in these ways. Since most of us are not expected to perfect any specific techniques or master any craft—unlike athletes or classical musicians, for example—and given that we are no longer tied to working in specific mediums, perhaps it’s fine to be a part-time artist? ”

Is perfection of craft really the only pursuit that warrants full-time careers? [e-flux]

Art Loop, Chicago’s public art program for local artists to produce new work within the city’s center, won’t take place in 2013. Last year, its budget had been slashed by $350,000. No word yet on whether the program’s been axed or merely put on hiatus. [Time Out Chicago]

Another ArtReview Power 100 List kicks off today, setting in motion the now annual tradition of quibbling over the top slots. This year, like every year, the list leaves room for shock, jest, and flak over who can muscle their way into the art world’s top ranks. It’s the type of list that leaves you scratching your head: What makes Kunsthalle Zürich’s Beatrix Ruf more powerful than MoMA’s Glenn Lowry? Is it possible to be young and powerful? Poor and powerful? We spoke with ArtReview Editor Mark Rappolt about this year’s list, and how its international jurors tend to reward those working on a global scale.

Cultural studies has established that suburban white kids love hip hop in a complex manner; heaps has been written on aspiration, colorblindedness, misogynism, emulation, and subordination. But just what makes hip hop so appealing to net artists? Instead of passing off any attempt to indulge in hip hop as a 1:1 relationship between appropriation and mockery, I’m interested in looking at how different artists incorporate hip hop in their artwork to talk about themselves.

We’re going to dole out this week’s blogger prize for Most Offensive Post one day early, because we’re pretty sure no one’s going to top GalleristNY. Yesterday, the blog celebrated Jayson Musson’s first show at Salon 94 with a two-page profile on the artist full of racist undertones. That’s an awfully strong word, and because we don’t use it lightly, we’re going to highlight exactly what we don’t like and why.

It’s been a good year for Jayson Musson. In 2009 he was unknown, and by 2012 thousands on YouTube were watching his bling-wearing alter ego Hennessy Youngman slag Damien Hirst for posing in photos like a “complete fucking asshole.”

Video artists are a troubled breed; nobody knows how to sell or collect their work. But heck, even MoMA has a ton of video in their collection, so maybe there’s a model out there that works. I sat down with Dara Birnbaum, the rare video artist who has both a gallery (Marian Goodman Gallery) and a distributor (Electronic Arts Intermix). That double life hasn’t deterred museums and collectors from taking an interest in her work. But, as I gleaned from a lengthy interview with Birnbaum, institutions don’t have a clue about fair compensation—not when MoMA only needs to pay $1,200 for one of her videos.

What follows are parts taken from a longer interview with Birnbaum. She’s grand in her ambitions, which include a steadfast commitment to unlimited editions, sticking with EAI, and stealing images. Oh, and we talk about Hennessy Youngman.